Marisacat

Peeking out.. 4 April 2011

Children play inside steel pipes that will be used by the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System in Manila, the Philippines [AFP/GETTY]

On top of everything else (of which there is a surfeit) what happens…. an experimental Gulfstream luxury small jet for the corporate trade with two pilots and two flight engineers aboard crashes, burns completely and all 4 die.

[T]hus, radiation from a meltdown in the reactor core of reactor No. 2 is leaking out into the water and soil, with other reactors continuing to experience problems.

Yet scientists and activists question these government and nuclear industry “safe” limits of radiation exposure.

“The U.S. Department of Energy has testified that there is no level of radiation that is so low that it is without health risks,” Jacqueline Cabasso, the Executive Director of the Western States Legal Foundation, told Al Jazeera.

Her foundation monitors and analyzes U.S. nuclear weapons programs and policies and related high technology energy, with a focus on the national nuclear weapons laboratories.

Cabasso explained that natural background radiation exists, “But more than 2,000 nuclear tests have enhanced this background radiation level, so we are already living in an artificially radiated environment due to all the nuclear tests.”

“Karl Morgan, who worked on the Manhattan project, later came out against the nuclear industry when he understood the danger of low levels of ionizing radiation-and he said there is no safe dose of radiation exposure,” Cabasso continued, “That means all this talk about what a worker or the public can withstand on a yearly basis is bogus. There is no safe level of radiation exposure. These so-called safe levels are coming from within the nuclear establishment.” . . .

The report notes that this month is the 25th anniversay of Chernobyl and last week is the 32nd anniversary of TMI.

Avoid spring, I guess. If you can!

****

Pepe Escobar has an update on the deals coming down in The Soon-to-be Libyan Colony (at least the Eastern part)…

[A] curious development is already visible. NATO is deliberately allowing Gaddafi forces to advance along the Mediterranean coast and repel the “rebels”. There have been no air strikes for quite a while.

The objective is possibly to extract political and economic concessions from the defector and Libyan exile-infested Interim National Council (INC) – a dodgy cast of characters including former Justice minister Mustafa Abdel Jalil, US-educated former secretary of planning Mahmoud Jibril, and former Virginia resident, new “military commander” and CIA asset Khalifa Hifter. The laudable, indigenous February 17 Youth movement – which was in the forefront of the Benghazi uprising – has been completely sidelined.

This is NATO’s first African war, as Afghanistan is NATO’s first Central/South Asian war. Now firmly configured as the UN’s weaponized arm, Globocop NATO is on a roll implementing its “strategic concept” approved at the Lisbon summit last November.

Gaddafi’s Libya must be taken out so the Mediterranean – the mare nostrum of ancient Rome – becomes a NATO lake. Libya is the only nation in northern Africa not subordinated to Africom or Centcom or any one of the myriad NATO “partnerships”. The other non-NATO-related African nations are Eritrea, Sawahiri Arab Democratic Republic, Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Moreover, two members of NATO’s “Istanbul Cooperation Initiative” – Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – are now fighting alongside Africom/NATO for the fist time. . . .

And to things keep rolling along, the UN has joined military forces with La Belle France (which, in any case, has “an occupying level force” based in Cote d’Ivoire) and sent in armed helicopters to strafe Gbagbo supporters. All Hail Ouattara.

Shall he be different?

Does it matter? I mean, to the West. Obviously it matters to the poor people on the ground.

[I]t isn’t simply that the consumer markets don’t value work worth doing; it’s that the society’s ruling and possessing classes regard working for a living as the mark of inferior or damaged goods.

The attitude made its first appearance on the American scene during the Gilded Age, dancing with the newly crowned kings of finance under the ballroom chandeliers in Newport and New York. Thorstein Veblen took note of the arrival in 1899, his Theory of the Leisure Class suggesting that it is the conspicuous consumption of the product of other people’s time and effort that makes up the sum of one’s own worth and meaning. Not the doing of the work, the digesting of it. “Leisure, considered as an employment,” said Veblen, “is closely allied in kind with the life of exploit, and the achievements which characterize a life of leisure and which remain as its decorous criteria, have much in common with the trophies of exploit.”

During the years prior to the Second World War, the attitude was safely confined to a small number of people preserved in the aspic of what was then big money. The victories over Germany and Japan fostered extensions of the franchise. Rescued by force of arms from the Great Depression, America seemed blessed with the enchantments of both Croesus and Colossus, the indisputable proofs of its wealth and military power giving rise to the notion that all its children were the inheritors of a vast fortune and therefore deserving of the best of all possible worlds that money could buy. No reason not to have it all — a new frontier, a great society, guns for a splendid little war in Asia, butter for the old folks at home, a house in the country, a boat on the lake, the face and fortune in the ad for one of Ralph Lauren’s tennis dresses.

Much of the world in 1945 was either bankrupt or in ruins, and the refurnishing of it supplied the American economy over the next 30 years with an abundance of jobs that afforded the means of independence and a measure of self-worth, while at the same time bringing forth the trophies of exploit to a consumer market more wonderful than the wonderful world of Oz, seeding ever broader acres of the nation’s human topsoil with the presumptions of entitlement favored by Veblen’s Newport heiresses. Don’t worry, be happy; go forth and shop. Leisure considered as employment.

Which was all well and good until it turned out, somewhere in the middle of the 1980s on the yellow brick road with Toto and the Gipper, that the Wizard was easy access to conspicuous credit. For how else could the American leaves of grass join their top-dressed companions on a golf course unless they borrowed money? The country’s working and middle classes discovered that it wasn’t the value of the work itself, or its manufacture of a decent living (as architect, bus driver, sales clerk, actress, lathe operator, automobile mechanic) that made up the sum of the country’s wealth and well-being.

Their great collective enterprise was the labor of consumption, and with it the derivative of debt, a byproduct, like the methane exuded by factory-farmed pigs, that funded the patriotic service owing to God, country, and the American Express card. The work was maybe mindless, a substitution of what is animal for what is human, but it fattened the gross domestic product, enriched the insurance companies and the banks, welcomed the second coming of an American Gilded Age, and now accounts for the increasingly grotesque disparity between the income earned as wages and the revenue collected as rent, interest, dividend, stock option, and year-end bonus.

Americans with jobs imagine they now work longer and harder hours than did their forebears on Mark Twain’s Missouri frontier; if so, their labor serves a purpose other than the one in hand. Finance accounted for 47% of total U.S. corporate profits in 2007; 58% of Harvard University’s male graduates in that same year (the heirs and assigns of Woodrow Wilson’s small class of persons deserving of a liberal education) took up careers as high-end traffickers in the drug of debt. It’s a lucrative trade, up to the standard of the cotton export from the dear old antebellum South. That it doesn’t add to the sum of human happiness or meaning is probably why the gentry on the lawns of Connecticut, together with their upper servants in Washington and the news media, talk about the lost battalion of America’s unemployed as a set of conveniently invisible numbers rather than as a body of fellow citizens.

they, the nooz deciders, started vaguely, very, very vaguely, hinting at the EPA detector problems about two weeks ago, …cuz of course historically ‘they’ want to be on record as having “informed the public,” yet prevented “mass hysteria” ….Not because they care (they will have taken the potassium iodine, etc. far earlier than any of those masses), but because it suits their purpose.

The US has quietly signalled that it no longer backs Yemen’s president as the country’s security forces on Monday again opened fire on demonstrators, this time in the mountain city of Taiz, killing at least 17 and wounding many more.

The UN, which has 9,000 peacekeepers in the country, said it had the mandate to respond to heavy weapons attacks against UN staff or civilians.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon insisted rebuffed the idea that the UN had taken sides in the conflict.

“In line with its Security Council mandate, the mission has taken this action in self-defence and to protect civilians,” he said.

The BBC’s Barbara Plett at the UN in New York says the action marks an escalation for the UN mission.

She says the mission has come under increasing pressure from the Security Council to take more aggressive action amid attacks on civilians and the mission’s own staff.

Former colonial ruler France, [I kind of liked that jab by the ever-British BBC – catnip], which still has about 12,000 citizens in the country, had earlier taken control of Abidjan airport from the UN mission.

welp ….was kind of late filling the nausea prescription for a “flu” I was told I had (apparently $4,600 worth of diagnosis) where I threw up for at least twenty four hours a little while back…. The non-generic medication cost: $489.00,…12 pills,….at the lowest cost place around ….okay I sez,….lemme look up RADIATION! …ZOFRAN!…..it’s an investment BUBBLE! ….git in while ya can! (of course I bought the $20.22 version …..jus in case me or mine has uncontrollable nausea in the near future……in addition to the apples, which work wonders for dry heaves.)

(sorry honey, accidently posted this on the last thread first …red faced oopsie .:0(.. had a few ounces of cheapie brew ;0) ….)

thanks honey, haven’t taken the med …though I haven’t felt totally back up to par as yet, I haven’t had that awful nonstop nausea since …just filled the prescription to have ‘just in case,’ as it’s not a preventative med, it’s one you take when nausea comes on.

no, it’s a generic form of Zofran (see my comment #6), prescribed if I started feeling violently nauseous again from a “viral flu.” When I looked up the brand name I noticed it’s used for chemotherapy, for one, which seemed to explain to me why it (Zofran) was so insanely expensive, and also not available.

thanks for that ,….yeah, years ago, I was prescribed a syrup (can’t think of the name of it) that tasted exactly like coke for really nasty stomach cramps, I recall the doctor saying there were very similar ingredients in it. Another stomach problem related cheap and simple remedy (except for people with restricted salt/sodium) is ½ teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) to 4 ounces of water every two hours (make sure it’s completely dissolved).

ooh..too bleakly fuckin funny ….the SoapBlogs …are once again ….in election mode….all those new to the web (more elders, ethnic minorities and newly unemployed) from the last election cycle who ended up commenting on a SoapBlog get to take up drug or drink after their “blogparents” have accumulated their valid complaints and huddled ‘parental’ heads as to how to best patronize and bully them into once again voting for the predators of the demoRatic party …as if it’s any different than the reThuglican party.

Yerhp, Strausse Kahn, that Bankster, that French chef, the grilled bifsteck guy in DC, the “reformer” touted as challenger to Sarko, one of the more laughable apologists in that film on the plunder, Inside Job: ‘Sacreblue! The Banks were BEGGING for more regulation!’

So yes, there it is: Steak, a few ‘brews, and let the cameras and the plunder of the EU roll…
till any of the the fools take notice or the Krauts take leave, that is. NTIM, they can make an inside bet on that, too.

An IT engineer fired by Gucci hacked into the company’s servers, deleting data and shutting down its email and other IT services in a revenge attack estimated to have cost the upmarket retailer around £125,000, Manhattan prosecutors allege.

Sam Chihlung Yin, 34 and from Jersey City,{GO JERSEY!}is accused of having secretly created a user account for himself in the name of a fictional employee while working at Gucci, giving him continued access to the company’s IT servers after he was sacked for an unrelated incident in May last year.

“In his remarks on Tuesday, Dimon also warned of the anti-competitive effects of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law.

He said new rules being developed for the roughly $600 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market could drive business oversees. He voiced similar criticisms of the derivatives rules last week at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event. “

“Our cooperation is contributing to Israel’s security as I said on a daily basis signified most recently by Israel’s deployment of the iron dome short-range rocket defense system, which we helped to fund by providing an additional $200 million this year.http://blogs.jta.org/politics/“

The lack of an effective emergency crisis management has underscored how
poorly prepared TEPCO and indeed the Japanese authorities were for a
nuclear disaster. Engineers seem helpless in their efforts to cope with
radioactive water and workers aren’t even getting proper meals. . . . . .

The roughly 400 men risking their lives to prevent the situation from deteriorating even further at the wrecked plant sleep in a building on the plant grounds. They lie on the floor in hallways, in stairwells and even in front of the clogged toilets. Each man has been given a blanket.

There are two meals a day: rationed biscuits in the morning and instant rice and Caloriemate, an energy supplement wafer, in the evening. Initially, each worker received only one bottle of water a day. Now they receive two. The men on whose shoulders the fate of the entire country of Japan rests are not even being given fresh underwear. “Everyone is dreaming of a cup of tea,” one worker told the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri.

I guess the DC contribution to those ‘worker bees,’ giving up their lives, to attempt to spare billions from the lethal effects that were unleashed….might be the biscuits? DC has gone far beyond merely disgusting and horrifying ….Odious Dawn …. indeed, Obama, his wifey, congress, etc. likely spend more on breakfast than is being spend on the dialy meals of the above mentioned four hundred …

Yeah, but I find it hard to believe that if the US government offered better provisions, like at least abundant drinking water on short supply in Japan, for those workers, since it is a worldwide problem, they would be turned down. I haven’t heard anything about anyone in DC being concerned for those workers.

and yeah, of course that doesn’t surprise, they’re not even concerned with workers, or those looking for work, in their own country. They should formally announce that they’re in the exterminating business as that’s what they do best, exterminate life.

When Reagan made ti to DC, after being a sleek GE barnacle in Cali for decades, I ignored him for just over two years (and had champagne in Austin the day he was sh*t, to be honest)

I was SO FUCKING GLAD Ronnie was out of California that it was a relief to b rid of him, in a sense…. of course now we have him forever, in pharoahanic style too!…

I expect FOundling most likely goes back in.

Going to have to look away.

Obama Says Mideast Turmoil Adds Urgency to Push for Peace Accord

Bloomberg – Catherine Dodge, Nicholas Johnston – ‎1 hour ago
‎
President Barack Obama said turmoil in the Mideast that has already toppled governments in Egypt and Tunisia increases the urgency for a peace agreement between Israel and the …

So.

At Thursday's debate, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren defended their Medicare for All plan. They faced criticism from several rivals, including Senator Amy Klobuchar, who described it as a "bad idea," and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who claimed the bill shows Sanders and Warren do not "trust the American people."

At the third presidential primary debate in Houston, Texas, senator and 2020 candidate Elizabeth Warren called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Warren also spoke about her stance on U.S. trade policy and how "our trade policy in America has been broken for decades."

After being questioned about the crisis in Venezuela, Senator Bernie Sanders defended his vision of democratic socialism. "I agree with what goes on in Canada and in Scandinavia: guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on Earth not to provide paid family and medical le […]

Debate moderator Jorge Ramos of Univision grilled former Vice President Joe Biden over the Obama administration's deportation record. Biden refused to answer whether he did anything to prevent Obama from deporting a record 3 million people.

A U.S. House of Representatives panel on Friday demanded internal emails, detailed financial information and other company records from top executives of Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc, Apple Inc, and Alphabet Inc's Google, widening the antitrust probe of Big Tech.

U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on Friday asked a government watchdog to look into the Trump administration's decision to launch an antitrust probe into four automakers cooperating with California on tighter greenhouse gas emissions limits that Trump is trying to eliminate.

A lawyer for former FBI official Andrew McCabe pressed U.S. prosecutors on Friday to drop their politically sensitive case against him, citing reports that suggest they may be having trouble securing criminal charges.

Media

from Howl

I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

October 7 1955

"a remarkable collection of angelson one stage reading their poetry"
"I think Allen Ginsberg standing up there reading - putting himself on the line - was one of the two bravest things I've ever seen. Remember, it was '55. People had crew cuts, and they looked at you like you were misplaced cannon fodder. The country was being run by Luce publications. It was a dangerous, cold, ugly time, and it was scary. . .
In all our memories no one had been so outspoken in poetry before. We had gone beyond a point of no return. None of us wanted to go back to the grey, chill, militaristic silence, to the intellectual void - to the land without poetry - to the spiritual drabness. We wanted to make it new and we wanted to invent it and the process of it as we went into it. We wanted voice and we wanted vision."
-Michael McClure

Democrats…

Same as goddam fucking forever.
Over and over, in election year after election year, GE and MidTerms both… the Dems start to purr and preen, they stretch luxuriously - at just being TOLD they are going to win [...]
It never fails.
... in February of 2002, looking over the already joyless congressional stragglers willing to be drafted for duty… they barely dreamed, yet, it was even possible (Howard, a different person then, had not arrived to say it could be done)… but one thing was clear, we could not rely on the party to swing it. Could not. You could smell it, they would screw the deal. And I am not talking about Howard and primary issues here. By the end, that was a passing political story. Chuck it on the heap.
[...]
Upshot? The Republicans make it thru. They hold on.